National Poetry Month

Life has side swiped me and things I used to look forward to are no longer on my radar.

Like the fact that it is National Poetry Month.

In another time, my goal in April was to diligently write a poem everyday of the month.

Sometimes I was able to and other times it was more of a hit and miss goal that took a backseat to being a mom of five and a wife.

But funny how even while sitting in a room at UCLA Orthopedic hospital in Santa Monica with my husband I was scribbling poems for him.

Maybe subconsciously April and poetry writing are forever connected in a visceral way for me.

None of them very good, but he loved them anyway. He always has.

Even while lying on the uncomfortable hospital bed slash table, waiting for the doctors to arrive to take the staples out that run down his legs like rivets, where they inserted titanium rods. More staples are around his ankle on his left leg where the bone had to be replaced with cement because cancer had destroyed the bones.

Melanoma is more familiar to me now than any other word.

Poetry once again was helping me through a difficult time. Just as it had when I first discovered the beauty and lyrical flow of a well written verse when I was a young girl. I loved limerick’s.

Poetry was written in tragic form while a rebellious teen. Black and dark scrawled across paper, it helped. And again the intensity and brevity of haiku was discovered as a busy overwhelmed mom who needed the simple yet thought provoking verse like others might need a breath of fresh air.

It sustained me.

How could I forget?

(The free form poem wrote that day)

I Remember~

Twisting thoughts, memories new and old,

Skipping missing, hitting against each other in my cluttered mind.

You, young full of life, energy pulsating, muscles lifting more than your share.

I remember.

I remember you in all your phases, stages of life.

Driven against time.

I remember.

I will always remember.

Up before four am, home again so late.

Welding caps lost, and long days in far away places.

Babies born with your dark hair

Songs sung in church so loud, God was sure to hear.

I remember.

I will always remember.

The man you were is the man you are and the man you always will be to me.

That was an incredibly beautiful poem. It’s funny how writing has a way of capturing everything we feel about someone or something and presenting it on a piece of paper. It may not give anyone all the answers, but it does help by providing a sort of release.

Hi Jasmine,
Thank you. I was hesitate to share but really glad I did. I will share the other’s I wrote while sitting in hospital rooms and waiting area’s over the last month while at UCLA Santa Monica with my husband for the blog challenge. I don’t think any are well, you know, that good but they are what they are from my heart and mind trying to deal with life.

I’m glad you decided to share this poem as well, and I look forward to reading more of your poems. I believe the best poems are the ones that carefully craft together what the heart and soul want to say.

Writing is an artistic expression of our feelings. Your husband has poetry as tangible gifts from your heart that he can hold in his hands as you doze in the hospital chair next to his bed. Truly gifts that keep on giving.